The long awaited ‘iWatch’ has finally been unveiled as the Apple Watch. It’s a square device with a multitude of detachable chain straps, and comes in three versions, regular, Sport and Edition, which comes in 18ct ‘supergold’, tempered to be much harder than real gold. The screen is Sapphire glass on all models.
Apple describes the Apple Watch as ‘the most personal device we’ve ever created’ and ‘an intimate way to connect and communicate’. The device works exclusively with iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 5, 5S and 5C. It’s worth noting that it requires an iPhone to work properly.
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The Apple Watch will of course have apps, displayed on the home screen as a honeycomb of circular icons which you can arrange around the central clock app, which includes very in depth custom faces. We’ve seen weather, passbook, mail, phone, stopwatch, photos and music for starters. It also features onboard data storage.
A special circular dial know as the Digital Crown controls zoom or scrolling, the crown is composed of an infra red leds and photodiodes that translate rotary movement into digital data. It also functions as the home button.
The sensory features of the watch are extensive, including features such as the accelerometer detecting when it is raised towards the face and activating the display. It features a heartbeat sensor that can be used to send your heartbeat to other Apple Watch users, and a ‘Taptic’ haptic feedback module which will vibrate the other user’s watch exactly to the rhythm of your heart. Also, the watch’s touch screen detects the force you put on it, with a ‘force push’ being used as a sort of ‘right click’ secondary selection.
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The watch is printed onto a single multi layer chip, meaning that it’s a mostly waterproof device. On the rear are Infrared and visible-light LEDs, along with photo sensors to detect your pulse rate, and of course there’s that accelerometer and gyroscope.
Charging is performed without a port via inductive charging with a round magsafe connector, which syncs up to the rear of the device to charge it.
There are too many interchangeable straps to list here, but suffice to say a lot of styles and utilities are available, from formal, classy straps to casual fun straps. There’s even a smaller version, if you’re not into huge fat mega watches… a ladies Apple Watch maybe?
The Apple Watch is designed to have third party apps developed for it, in fact there’s even a suite called Watch Kit which allows developers to optimise push notifications for their Apps. The watch will debut in early 2015 at the massive price of $349. As a side note, Apple said nothing about the battery life, which earlier in the week was hailed as ‘disappointing’. We’ll have to see when it arrives next year.
Source: Apple’s Event Page
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